Scaling Without the Complexity: Modernizing AP, AR and Liquidity Management

Hospitality companies have spent the past decade making travel feel more seamless.  Mobile booking, digital room keys, loyalty platforms, online travel agencies, and flexible payment options have reshaped how guests plan, book, and experience travel.  Behind those interactions, however, the movement of money has become more complex.

That complexity comes as the industry enters another phase of growth. PwC forecasts that U.S. hotel demand will increase 3.2% in 2026, outpacing the expected 2.3% increase in supply, while revenue per available room is projected to grow 2.9%.¹ As hotel groups, cruise operators, and travel companies expand across brands, properties, and markets, treasury and finance teams are being asked to support a growing volume of payments, suppliers, and financial relationships without adding the same level of operational burden.

Every reservation, supplier invoice, online travel agency settlement, corporate booking, loyalty redemption, refund, and commission creates another financial interaction. The challenge is no longer simply processing payments efficiently. It is ensuring finance operations can keep pace with the business behind every guest interaction while providing treasury with a clearer view of liquidity, working capital, and growth.

Many hospitality finance teams are no longer focused only on transaction efficiency. They are rethinking how money moves through the business and where treasury can create more visibility, control, and value. The priorities shaping that work reflect a broader shift underway across businesses with complex physical footprints, supplier networks, and customer payment flows:

• Simplify payment flows before complexity slows growth. Every new property, supplier, booking channel, and payment method introduces another financial relationship. Leading organizations reduce unnecessary process variation and manual reconciliation so treasury can maintain clearer visibility into cash, reduce trapped liquidity, and scale payment activity without weakening financial control.
• Manage accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) as strategic drivers of liquidity. Payment timing, collections, supplier relationships, and settlement cycles directly influence cash flow and working capital. Treasury increasingly works alongside finance to optimize these decisions.
• Connect banking, treasury, and financial systems to improve liquidity visibility and control. Integrated bank connectivity, ERP and TMS platforms, and consolidated reporting can connect payment, receivables, and account information across properties and markets, strengthening forecasting, reconciliation, and decision-making.
• Standardize processes before expanding technology. Consistent approval, payment, and reconciliation practices create a stronger foundation for automation, governance, and scalability.
• Use finance to support smarter growth. Treasury insights can inform expansion planning, operational performance, and long-term business strategy.

Hospitality has always managed high transaction volumes, but today's operating environment is fundamentally different. Consumer payments now move alongside corporate travel accounts, OTA settlements, supplier invoices, loyalty programs, franchise relationships, and cross-border transactions, each with its own settlement timelines and reconciliation requirements.

Growth can add financial complexity quickly, especially when payment flows, markets, and reporting requirements expand at the same time. Opening a new property or entering a new market rarely introduces a single payment flow. Instead, it creates new suppliers, banking relationships, payment methods, tax considerations, and reporting obligations that must be managed consistently across the organization. For treasury, that challenge is not unique to hospitality. Real estate, asset-intensive, and consumer-facing businesses can face similar pressures as they add locations, suppliers, revenue channels, and financial relationships.

Without standardized processes, those additional financial relationships quickly create fragmented workflows that reduce forecasting accuracy, increase reconciliation effort, and limit treasury's visibility into cash. Organizations that simplify payment flows early are better positioned to support expansion without allowing operational complexity to scale alongside the business.

As payment environments become more complex, accounts payable and accounts receivable are evolving from administrative functions into strategic treasury capabilities. Together, they provide greater visibility into liquidity, cash positioning, and working capital while helping organizations make faster, more informed financial decisions.

Supplier payment strategies influence commercial relationships and operational continuity. Receivables determine how quickly cash becomes available to fund operations and future investment. The speed of reconciliation affects how accurately treasury understands available liquidity. As a result, treasury teams are partnering more closely with operations, procurement, and finance to ensure payment processes support broader business objectives rather than simply processing transactions efficiently.

Chelsea McCune, Director, Corporate Banking – Real Estate, Gaming and Lodging (REGAL), notes: "Many hospitality organizations are rethinking AP and AR as part of a broader working capital strategy. As businesses expand across brands, properties and markets, treasury leaders are looking for clearer visibility into how money moves through the organization and where opportunities exist to improve liquidity and operational efficiency."

At Scotiabank, we see hospitality companies increasingly looking across payments, receivables, liquidity, and operational processes as interconnected parts of the same financial picture. The goal is not simply to move money faster. It is to give treasury and finance leaders a clearer view of cash across the business so they can manage working capital, respond to changing needs, and make better-informed decisions about growth.

For organizations operating across multiple locations, brands, legal entities, or markets, growth can make it more difficult to maintain a clear view of cash across the business. Hospitality is a particularly visible example, but the same challenge arises across real estate, asset-intensive, and consumer-facing businesses with distributed operations and complex financial relationships.

Effective liquidity management begins with understanding where cash sits, how it is moving, and when it may be needed. Greater visibility across payments, receivables, and account information can give treasury a more complete view of available liquidity, helping finance leaders manage working capital more deliberately and make more informed funding decisions.

That visibility also matters as operating needs change. Cash that is fragmented across accounts or entities can be more difficult to put to work effectively, while a clearer view of liquidity can help treasury balance near-term obligations with investment priorities and future growth. The objective is not simply to centralize cash, but to give finance leaders the information and flexibility to deploy it where it can best support the business.

"Liquidity challenges are often less about the amount of cash available and more about visibility. When balances, payment activity and receivables are spread across multiple properties, brands or legal entities, treasury can spend significant time assembling information instead of acting on it. Greater visibility helps treasury distinguish cash needed for day-to-day operations from funds available to support working capital elsewhere in the business or fund growth,” observes Oksana Matviyenko, Director, Treasury Management Officer, Global Transaction Banking – Real Estate, Gaming and Lodging (REGAL).

As organizations scale, liquidity oversight therefore becomes part of a broader finance discipline: maintaining control while giving the business room to grow. The structures and approaches will vary by organization, but the underlying treasury objective remains the same: stronger visibility, more deliberate working capital management, and better-informed financial decision-making.

Standardization and connectivity must advance together. As hospitality organizations grow across properties, brands, legal entities, and markets, fragmented bank portals, account structures, payment files, and reporting processes can limit treasury’s ability to see and control cash across the enterprise. Technology can accelerate efficiency, but automating inconsistent processes often allows complexity to scale faster.

A more centralized treasury infrastructure can connect these moving parts. Host-to-host connectivity and integration between banks, enterprise resource planning systems, and treasury management systems can create a more consistent flow of payment instructions, account information, and reporting data. Combined with standardized onboarding requirements, approval structures, and file formats, this connectivity can make it easier to bring new properties, accounts, and markets into a common operating model without rebuilding processes each time the business expands.

Consolidated reporting then gives treasury a more complete view of balances, transactions, payment status, and liquidity across the organization. Rather than managing each property or market as a separate financial environment, treasury can monitor activity through a more connected framework, strengthen controls, reduce manual reconciliation, and make more informed funding and working capital decisions.

Hospitality has transformed how guests move through the business. The next opportunity is improving how money moves through the business.

Organizations that combine standardized finance processes with connected banking and treasury infrastructure will be better positioned to scale without allowing operational complexity to increase at the same pace. By connecting payment flows, accounts, properties, and markets, hospitality companies can translate standardization into stronger liquidity visibility, greater financial control, and a more scalable foundation for growth.

As your organization grows, the right treasury approach can help simplify payments, strengthen liquidity visibility and support greater financial control. Connect with our Global Transaction Banking team to explore solutions tailored to your business.